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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

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Another public art display has been put into question. A $250,000, 20-metre high "mirror ball" tower is planned for the new 110,000 square foot, $80 million Minoru aquatics and seniors centre in Richmond.

Pot activists and Vancouver police clashed at a Canada Day demonstration on Wednesday at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Four people were arrested as the so-called protest stretched into a long, hot day full of pro-pot propaganda on the concrete steps of the art gallery.

STORE IN STORE: With new windows lining its six upper floors, the 1973 Granville-at-Georgia building that once reminded some of a men’s urinal is almost ready for anchor tenant Nordstrom to set up shop. The Seattle-based department store chain’s Vancouver manager, Chris Wanlass, arrived this week. With Nordstrom Canada president Karen McKibbin, he promptly held a reception on the neighbouring Vancouver Art Gallery’s rooftop patio. VAG director Kathleen Bartels welcomed 114-year-old Nordstrom to a neighbourhood she is eager to vacate for one six blocks eastward. The reception benefited the gallery, BC Children’s Hospital, BC Women’s Hospital and Covenant House Vancouver. So will a gala-fashion show in the store itself Sept. 16. That’ll be vieux chapeau for McKibbin, who opened a Calgary Nordstrom last fall and one in Ottawa in March, with two in Toronto imminent. Overlooking the courthouse complex, the Vancouver store’s farm-to-table Bar Verde restaurant will replicate ones in L.A. and Glendale. Meanwhile, bag-toting husbands may welcome a bar right on the shopping floor. •

FACING UP: It’s rare for a charity gala to raise $1.5 million, even with tickets costing $2,500 and the BMO Financial Group contributing $100,000. For hen’s-teeth rarity, though, the Face The World Foundation did it recently on the boarded-over swimming pool of the family home where Jacqui Cohen founded the foundation 25 years ago. Tom Jones sang in 1991, and larger and lesser successors led to this year’s appearance by figure-skater-turned-drag-queen MILK, a.k.a. Daniel Donigan. The MC was CTV News co-anchor Mike Killeen, whose wife, communications pro Jill Killeen, is on FTW’s board. So are present and past broadcasters Jim Byrnes, Vicki Gabereau, Pamela Martin, Anna Wallner and Joy MacPhail who, with husband James Shavick, owns the gay-and-lesbian OUTtv network. The foundation has reportedly raised and distributed $15 million, mostly to organizations serving women and children. •

Miles Davis. Wynton Marsalis. Diana Krall. Esperanza Spalding. The late Ornette Coleman. These jazz powerhouses have all graced the Vancouver stage thanks to the Coastal Jazz Society and the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival.

Plump putti with tiny wings, mythological characters that float in the air in apparent disregard for the laws of physics, and avenging angels with swords are among the cast of characters in a new exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Jean-Paul Kelly creates short videos that question the truth of documentary imagery. The Toronto artist isolates details from documentaries, photographs and online media, then animates or otherwise reconfigures them to stress new meanings.

Chef Don Guthro and his students from the North Shore Culinary School will serve lunch for 5,000 people at the Vancouver Art Gallery Wednesday using “rescued” food. But don’t worry, no one went dumpster diving looking for ingredients. Rescued food is close to, but not at, its best-before date, Guthro explained. Food distributors find it harder to sell for this reason. If they’re not able to freeze the food and sell it later, or give it away to places like food banks, it can get thrown out.

VICTORIA — When Ombudsman Jay Chalke was handed the job of investigating those botched firings in the health ministry this week, he offered multiple assurances to the public that his office would do its best to get to the bottom of the murky affair. “I am committed to a diligent and professional investigation into this matter,” he vowed in a statement issued by his office after a legislature committee referred the matter to him.